By David Moberg (In These Times) – The headline news on Friday that the unemployment rate in November dropped 0.4 percent to 8.6 percent may help President Obama avoid losing his job next year. But the reality behind the figures will not—and that reality includes a big dose of stress, anger, despair and insecurity even beyond the ranks of the unemployed, according to two new reports.
The number of jobs in the country grew by 120,000 in November, slightly below the rate of the past year (though it could be revised upwards as the Labor Department just did for the previous two months). That’s barely enough to cover the growth of the labor force, and it reflects the loss of 20,000 public sector jobs–a continuing erosion of anemic private sector growth as a result of budget-cutting.
The bad news behind the lower unemployment rate is simply that the labor forcce last month shrank by 315,000 workers, who presumably have given up searching for a job. Although the Great Recession has been particularly rough for men, women–unmarried and disproportionately African-American–more than accounted for November’s labor force decline. Read more here.
